


The Magic Touch

by icewhisper



Series: Leonard Snart Shorts [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 09:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11033214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: Len wasn't even supposed to be in Central the day the Particle Accelerator got powered up, but he was and things changed.





	The Magic Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of my writing blog, [leonardsnartwrites](https://leonardsnartwrites.tumblr.com/). Normally, it would have been posted under the collections fic, [Leonard Snart Shorts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10837056), but it ended up longer than expected.
> 
> Anonymous prompt: Could you write a small thing about Coldwave as actual meta humans?

He wasn’t even supposed to be in Central when the Particle Accelerator got powered up. He’d been in Opal City, jittery and annoyed, because he hated the period between jobs when he had to keep his head down. Before, it was easier. He’d had Mick to distract him, but-

He wasn’t thinking about that. He was very good with not thinking about that. That was a lie. He was horrible at not thinking about Mick or the fire or the last time he’d seen him—drugged into unconsciousness, wrapped in bandages, and with survival odds that tore Len to pieces.

Damn it.

He forced the memories back as he ran, boots pounding against uneven pavement. An explosion that big—whatever the hell it was—would send a shockwave throughout most of the city and no one could run fast enough to escape it, but if he could just make it a little farther…

His ankle twisted when he rounded the corner too fast with an angle that was all wrong. He was too damn old for this, he thought as pain shot up his entire leg. Move. He had to move.

He crashed into the wall by the back entrance to the old bank. Safe house #4 ever since he and Mick— _damn it_ —had taken over the abandoned space. They’d fit it with the security themselves, systems so complex that most criminals wouldn’t even try to get in, but something that was child’s play to them. It had been their favorite spot, something to be protected, because it was more home than safe house.

The pain in the ass home-slash-safe-house whose keypad was on the fritz _again_.

He cursed, fingers flying over the numbers. Not working. Not… Damn it. He tore the front off so he could get at the wires and pretended his hands weren’t shaking. No time. There wasn’t any-

Something threw him against the wall.

Pain.

A shock.

Everything went dark.

 

 

He didn’t think about it for a long time, more content to kick himself for being so worried about a shockwave that ended up being more of a strong wind. People got hurt and people died, but all that happened to him was a shove. He’d faced the most damage when his fingers caught exposed wires. Minor electrocution, he’d assured Lisa as she promptly lost her shit and let out an impressive string of insults. He told her he was fine, that he’d woken up just a few minutes after everything and gotten the hell out of Central before they had time to initiate some kind of lockdown.

He went to meet her in Coast City instead of returning to Opal, grit his teeth, and let her cling.

Months passed as normal. Jobs got done. Payouts were divvied up. He groaned his way through the lay-low periods.

He planned side jobs that stopped being risky and started being insane. Mick would have vetoed them the second he saw the crazed glint in Len’s eyes, but he wasn’t there. He was drifting along the east coast—because Leonard was out, but he was also an obsessive freak and had to know where Mick was—and recovering, so he wasn’t there to tell Len that hacking unhackable security systems was on the list of Very Bad Ideas.

He wasn’t there to play victim to triumphant gloating when Len got past them so easily that it felt like cheating.

He _was_ there when Len went to a seedy motel in Central with a heat gun and a proposal.

They didn’t talk about the fire, content to let the present act as an apology and Mick’s acceptance to say _we’re good_. They weren’t good at words, more men of action—Lisa called it dumb action—than emotion.

He leaned over Mick’s shoulder to point out a component on the heat gun and frowned. It didn’t look right, some instinctual knowledge that things weren’t lining up.

He’d barely touched it when they both watched things shift and snap into place in a way that _felt_ right and, somehow, Len knew the gun was the way it was supposed to be.

“How the hell did you do that?”

He had no idea. It took them months to realize that Len had been affected by the blast too. It took them even longer—a time ship and things falling apart all over again—for them to realize it wasn’t just him.

Mick had been on the tail end of the blast, closer to the city limits as he drove in, but it shifted something with him—latent abilities that didn’t come out until the Time Masters and their induction processes triggered it. Len wondered if that was what decided Mick’s abilities, if he could have lived the rest of his life without anything rising up, but it was a moot point when they reached the Vanishing Point and Mick _knew_ what was going to happen. He saw Ray with his arm in the Oculus. He saw the blast. He saw every damn possibility if someone else took his place.

“The time line falls apart if any of us die,” Mick told him while Len put some final modifications on their guns. “I’m talking dinosaurs walking around LA. They fucking _break time_.”

Len looked at him, one eyebrow raised as an idea came to him-

“No. Fuck no. I know that look, Len.”

“I-”

“Don’t even try it. That shit’s not a security system. You can’t mind-control it into doing what you want.”

“Does it have wires?” he asked innocently, because they damn well knew anything with a _failsafe_ had to have some kind of tech in it. The Oculus controlled the timeline, but it wasn’t magic. “Get me two minutes with it and I can figure out how to set a delay.”

Mick’s eyes glazed over the way they always did when he was Seeing. “They’ll try to disengage anything if it’s left alone.”

Len smirked. “Even better.”

 

 

In the end, he needed three minutes—Mick said he needed a drink and a vacation—before he was able to make the adjustments he needed. The failsafe clicked into place the way he needed it to, a ticking time bomb—“It’s not even funny, Len. Stop snickering.”—for when the Robed Assholes reached it, and they high tailed it back to the ship.

They made it back with seconds to spare, but they didn’t make it past the cargo bay before someone set them on course for anywhere-but-here.

Mick kissed him as they hung onto handholds. “You’re an idiot.”

“Time line safe?”

“As safe as it can be with them in charge,” Mick grunted, eyes glassy, “but there aren’t any T-Rexes in Hollywood.” He snorted. “Some psychos get a past you to join the Legion of Drama Queens, though. Brainwashed. You kept pissing off the head guy and he wanted to shut you up.”

“Pre-blast?” he asked, because a brainwashed him in full control of his technopath abilities wouldn’t be easy.

“Just after. You didn’t know what you were doing.”

There was that, at least.

 

 

Ray was mid-speech when they made it onto the bridge, calling them heroes with respecting tones that made Len a little nauseous.

“How touching,” he drawled and looked at Mick. “I didn’t realize heroes tricked Time Masters into setting off suicide bombs.”

“Wait until you see what you do to Savage,” Mick told him with a grin that made Len a little excited.

Ray gaped at them. “What… How…”

“Our villain names aren’t quite accurate,” he said and cast an amused look at Mick. “Cisco will be so disappointed.”

“He’s not renaming us.”

“You two couldn’t have survived,” Rip argued. “The failsafe-”

“I’ve cracked harder safes,” Len sniffed.

“Mr. Snart-”

He laid a hand on the console and let a flurry of sparks erupt behind him, more for show than for damage. The team still squawked, but he could literally _hear_ Gideon giggling in his head, because at least _she_ liked the theatrics. “You just need the-”

“Boss, you say _magic touch_ , and you’re sleeping on the floor for a week,” Mick warned, one finger raised like it would deter him. “I can- No. You can’t say that either. Len, I can _See_ you saying it. Don’t.”

He said it anyway.

Watching the way Stein’s brain seemed to explode was worth what the floor did to his back.

The End


End file.
